


Inverted Dreaming

by Tyrelingkitten



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: 50 Sentences, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyrelingkitten/pseuds/Tyrelingkitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baekhyun has been losing a lot of sleep because of the nightmares haunting his every dream. He decided to visit the Shop of Dreams to meet a Yumekui—Dream Eater—Chanyeol, to get rid of his bad dreams. Things are just not the way they seem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inverted Dreaming

_-      God_  
“I’m simply a Dream Eater, not a god or a demon.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _-    Sudden – before_  
It all started with dreams, bad dreams about faceless people, about his leaking eyes, about pain and fresh blood dripping from the skies.  
  
 _-    Harm – before_  
In fact, the details varied every time; sometimes the dreams consisted of a knife, protruding the wall, spilling blood—a faceless body lying nearby, while other times the sky would be painted in plumes of fire and grey clouds as Baekhyun found himself standing in the middle of mass destruction, blood covering his hands and the insides of his nails.  
  
-    Wash – before       
And sometimes Baekhyun would wake up, shivering, goose bumps travelling all across his body and feeling very not himself—staring at his reflection in the bathroom (how did he get there?) while he was continuously scrubbing his hands raw under the running tap.  
  
 _-    Torn – before_  
His dreams were so terrifying, he fought against sleep, downed many cups of coffee just to ward it off and stared at nothing with bloodshot eyes, fingers gripping the sheets until he could feel the blunt nails digging painfully into his palms; and yet despite his precautions, after going through three days without sleep, Baekhyun’s body simply shut down, crumbling to the ground in the middle of the sidewalk.  
  
 _-    Eye – before_  
The reflection in the mirror was staring back at Baekhyun, dark bags visible underneath his eyes—he looked awful.  
  
 _-    Stop – before_  
He couldn’t take this anymore; he wanted to sleep, wanted to enjoy the soft feathery pillow under his cheeks; he missed drifting off to dream about something innocent things like life, puppies, sunshine or even his family before he moved out of the house—this whole thing about bad dreams had to be stopped.  
  
 _-    Fortune – before_  
A friend told him out of the blue about a fortune teller who could read people without using preconceived questions like “what’s your horoscope?”, “what’s your blood type?” or “how do you describe your childhood?”—and maybe visiting her might explain his situation.  
  
 _-    One – before_  
The fortune teller studied him with hawk-like eyes, face blank, red painted lips curled into a small smile of sorts and then she raised a finger, saying in a soft but clear voice, “Your only option is to meet with a Dream Eater— _yumekui_.”  
  
 _-    Ghost – before_  
The library and the internet were unhelpful during Baekhyun’s search about this “yumekui”—was he an animal spirit representation of divinity or simply a horror story main lead?—and to actually visit one in this time of age was actually absurd.  
  
-  _Drive – before_  
Every step he took, every ground he covered, his feet brought him closer and closer to his place of destination—the place called the coffee _Shop of Dreams_.  
  
 _-    Picture – before/meeting_  
The first thing Baekhyun noticed about the shop was that—aside from exuding gloominess—the shop was a picture perfect example of an actual, normal, average coffee shop down the street—small tables lined up neatly in the vicinity with three or four chairs to accommodate patrons, one large glass display case on the counter showing a lonely slices of cake tiramisu and opera, one coffee machine in the back of the counter, one large cooler housing four packs of milk and small black boards flashing the current breakfast menu in cutely fashion–well, except for the impossibly tall bartender eyeing him with dark, dark eyes.  
  
 _-    Soul --meeting_  
Those eyes were searching him, dissecting every piece of his body and boring into his soul, demanding it to bare everything to the world.  
  
  
  
  
 _-    Hunger—before_  
Chanyeol had not eaten a dream for weeks now—his stomach felt empty, shriveled up and too hollow to be called healthy.  
  
 _-    Bother—before_  
It was as if no one bothered coming for his assistance to cure them from bad dreams and sleepless nights; okay, so maybe the results were sometimes too horrifying to comprehend once Chanyeol consumed a nightmare—like that one time when a jilted lover came in to cure herself from forgetting her body parts in her dreams, which resulted to an attempted murder charge and an amnesia case at the same time.  
  
 _-    Wait – before_  
Aside from the tragic endings, Chanyeol only cared about tasty nightmares and simply sat in the shop, dressed deceptively in a bartender uniform and waited for anyone to step forward to reveal their worst nightmare.  
  
  
 _-    Child –meeting_  
Then one day, one gloomy slow business day, a child stepped in—well, not exactly a child, Chanyeol amended mentally, just an adult with a childish face or maybe it was the height that dwarfed out the possibility that this new customer was in fact older than Chanyeol in human years.  
  
 _-    Change –meeting_  
“Welcome, sir, how may I help you?” Chanyeol smiled brightly and his dark, gloomy face immediately disappeared, his voice not matching the face and the effect made Baekhyun instantly confused.  
  
 _-    Hold – meeting_  
Baekhyun’s fingers were long and slender as they reached out for a quick, business-like handshake, “Hi, I’m Baekhyun and I’m looking for the Dream Eater.”  
  
 _-    Learn – meeting_  
“You’re looking at him—I’m Chanyeol,” Chanyeol smiled again, this time one of his eyes twitched in anticipation—that little movement made Baekhyun reconsider his choice for coming here as he appraised the tall bartender.  
  
 _-    Book – before/meeting_  
There was little known about a _yumekui_ ’s appearance—only a few Japanese folktales and one fictionalized novel spoke of a _yumekui_ being a crossbreed of an elephant’s head, tusks, and trunk, with horns and tiger’s claws—which definitely did not fit this Chanyeol’s appearance.      
  
 _-    Last – meeting_  
“You’re my last customer for tonight,” the strange, tall man said in a tone that promised danger and suspense; something in Baekhyun screamed at him that it wasn’t a good idea to enter this shop in the first place.  
  
 _-    Motion –meeting_  
Chanyeol smiled—maybe understanding Baekhyun’s frozen expression—passing Baekhyun some kind of concoction (“Tea or coffee?”) and gestured to take a seat across him.  
  
 _-    Cool – meeting_  
Baekhyun eyed the drink warily, then at Chanyeol before reaching out to take the cup and raised it to his lips, sipping the surprisingly cool liquid with care.  
  
 _-    Need – meeting_  
“Can you please get rid of my nightmares?”  
  
-     _Young – meeting_  
“Are you certain?” Chanyeol said, eyes hauntingly beautiful, looking far too aged beyond his overall appearance.  
  
 _-    Hide – meeting_      
Baekhyun suppressed the urge to gulp and flee at the same time when Chanyeol’s imploring gaze never swayed, even as Baekhyun nodded in reply.  
  
 _-    Command – meeting_  
With a flick of his wrist, Chanyeol conjured a wand, pointed it to Baekhyun’s face and pulled at the invisible string that opened the gate of dreams, “Now sleep.”  
  
 _-    Gentle – meeting_  
There were fingers touching his hand, his arm, his face and finally his head; careful, callused but gentle fingers.  
  
 _-    Wall – meeting_  
Baekhyun’s mind had many defenses set in motion, readied and alert even though Chanyeol was confident he could bypass them all in one moment of breath.  
  
 _-    Naked – meeting_  
Chanyeol regaled at the dream, at the sheer perversity he had gotten himself into as he stripped off Baekhyun’s every defense and watched the dream unfold by the sidelines—this time, the subconscious Baekhyun explained, the dream is more vivid than the previous ones.  
  
 _-    King –meeting_  
Baekhyun dreamed of gold, castles, horses, bright light and suddenly a throne bathed in blood—all random besides the blood dripping from the walls and then there’s that body—for the first time, he could finally discern the stranger’s face lying at the foot—dead, eyes unseeing, blood matting his hair, looking very much like the Dream Eater Chanyeol.  
  
 _-    Wrong – meeting_  
His heart was beating erratically in his chest, frightened; he shot a glance to Chanyeol standing beside him and then at the body lying sprawled at their feet—they looked too identical.  
  
 _-    Mad – meeting_  
“I swear this never happened before in any of my dreams!” Baekhyun said in defense.  
  
 _-    Believe – meeting_  
A thoughtful look crossed Chanyeol’s face as the Dream Eater pulled on a thread linking to Baekhyun’s mind, nibbling on it as he finally said, “Your dream is really heavy, Baekhyun-ah, maybe we should make this a regular meeting?”  
  
 _-    Vision – meeting_  
Everything screeched to a halt when Chanyeol finally realized why the dream tasted strange, why it continued to prickle his tongue and numbing his teeth with every bite—he stared at the sleeping Baekhyun, “You’re dreaming in visions.”  
  
 _-    Attention – meeting_  
The fact that Baekhyun is an untapped Seer of the distant future immediately caught Chanyeol’s attention.  
  
 _-    Blur – meeting_  
After visiting the Dream Eater, Baekhyun’s dreams became a blur of death, Chanyeol, raining blood, the wall, other faceless bodies, and more Chanyeol—he wasn’t so sure if he should feel assured or scared at this rate.  
  
  
  
  
 _-    Power – meeting_  
On the third night, Chanyeol confirmed that Baekhyun’s powers were growing every time he so much nibbled on a thread of Baekhyun’s nightmare—and that part itself blew everything up into disproportions.  
  
 _-    Precious – after_  
But by that time, Chanyeol was starting to find the constant presence of Baekhyun sitting across the table, sipping tea or coffee, really comforting that his nightly sessions with Baekhyun should be wrong.  
  
 _-    Fool – after_  
You fool, Chanyeol realized while staring at himself in the mirror, noticing the signs of unusual warts forming below his ears and underneath his chin; he shouldn’t have preyed on Baekhyun’s nightmares at all—he shouldn’t have convinced the human to come over regularly at all.  
  
 _-    History – after_  
Eating a Seer’s dream had quickened the process of passage, cut into Chanyeol’s immortal life line and depleted most of his powers.  
  
 _-    Never – meeting/after_  
He would never see Baekhyun’s smile again, Chanyeol realized with regret.  
  
  
  
  
 _-    Time     - meeting/after_  
“It’s finally time,” Chanyeol said when Baekhyun sat down on his usual chair at the end of the week, “to pass on to the next Dream Eater.”  
  
 _-    Thousand – meeting_  
In theory, it shouldn’t be much of a problem regarding a full power transfer from a Dream Eater to a Seer, but it spawned too many possible consequences to their current situation.  
  
 _-    Safe – afterward_  
For all what’s worth, the transfer might even be less safe than Chanyeol had theorized in the beginning—they might not even make it alive.  
  
 _-    Sing – meeting_  
Baekhyun’s heart was making strange leaps as Chanyeol smiled at him, looking almost ancient, as his hand reached out, “Do you accept?”  
  
 _-    Goodbye - afterward_  
A light flashed, nearly blinding him and then Baekhyun’s eyes was blinking at a faint image of a smiling Chanyeol, a silhouette, before his mind registered the words, “Farewell, Baekhyun.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _-    Now – after_  
If you want to get rid of your bad dreams, look for a small, quaint coffee shop wedged between two apartment building blocks, named “Shop of Dreams”.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _-    God_  
“I’m a Dream Eater, not a god or a demon.”  
  
-    Shadow  
“Though the name Dream Eater is misleading, I prefer eating nightmares; the worst they are, the better they taste.”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> AU; dark fantasy!AU; angst/implied death but not really, loosely CLAMP style; loosely based on Yumekui Kenbun; using 1sentence set theme Epsilon as inspiration. Might turn into a two-shot of sorts but who knows.
> 
> \----
> 
> Yumekui – Dream eater or a baku.
> 
> Wrote this as a one sentence challenge until I realized a lot of stuff in this AU were missing pieces so… some of them were twisted (forgive me for butchering the grammar rules) to fit the chronological order of the story without disrupting the actual plot. So yeah… I was considering writing a chaptered fic for this plot but… ^^;; we’ll see.
> 
> And this was like a la Tokyo Babylon/X CLAMP style. LOL.
> 
>  
> 
> The story in my mind was something like this:
> 
> Chanyeol eats nightmares to sustain himself—for a price. Baekhyun has bad dreams—turned out to be visions—turned out to be a dream seer of the future. Someone suggested Baekhyun to visit the Dream shop to talk to a yumekui/dream eater and strike up a contract for one night.  
> In one night Chanyeol finds out about Baekhyun being a untapped magical being, just like him—but sitting on the opposing side. Chanyeol advised the naïve Baekhyun to come again every night, because the “nightmare” was too big to eat—with the intention of trying to warp the vision seer’s ability. But along the process Baekhyun’s vision became stronger, more vivid and shows him something horrifying—Baekhyun killing Chanyeol. By that time, Baek is already in love with Chan so he couldn’t follow the vision. But in the end, his dreams grew too powerful for Chanyeol to eat and ended up directly harming Chanyeol instead—until the owner of Shop of Dreams finally disappeared and Baekhyun received the status of the dream eater.


End file.
